Living Entrepreneurship Blog / Babson Entrepreneurs

Online Reputation – But I don’t use social media?

The internet is informative, helpful, a great way to communicate, a convenient way to access custom and a fantastic marketing tool. Through social media, even the smallest businesses have been able to grow larger than life reputations and in turn, profit margins. Like it or not, social media must be mastered by any entrepreneur wishing to take their project forward regardless of whether they intend to use it for marketing purposes.
It is imperative that businesses are aware of the damage that the internet can inflict on an unassuming brand. We are no longer living in a time when you can monitor your customers visually on a daily basis. You can no longer assume that each of your customers will only tell their neighbors about you. What you must remember is that each of your clients has millions of people at their fingertips through communications on the internet. Potentially your clients (and employees) can tell not only a dozen but thousands of people exactly what they think about your business venture. This can be extremely damaging if that customer happens to be the one to whom you argued with over a refund!
It is at this point that you might be shaking your head at the article claiming that this is why you stay well clear of social media. If this is so, you are wrong. You are just as capable of becoming victim to an adverse film being uploaded onto Youtube or the subject of a damning but popular blog entry on Facebook. You must therefore pay interest as to how your brand is being treated in the realm of social media even if you do not wish to use social media to market your products.
Whether you are a small or large company you must be actively aware of brand monitoring. Learn how to use Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. You may even wish to build up your own profile on some of these to protect against someone else doing it for you. A social media policy can also help in protecting you against the negative actions of a stray employee. It is near impossible to make the best out of your business while someone online is doing their very best to destroy your reputation and you don’t know about it.